Saturday, 4 June 2011

Part 2: Congas, Cricket and Comedy

As promised, this is part two of my entry from last night...which in reality is just a continuation of what I was aiming to try and write last night before I got tired.

Since I got back to Leeds on Tuesday, I've been running around doing various things. To be completely honest though, pretty much everything has been Honeydrum related. Over the past few days, I've had a couple of conga sessions...and I think I'm starting to get somewhere with it. At the moment, I'm not in a state of doing loads of things with it,, and to be honest, for a while I need to focus on getting technique right. Once I get the technique into my playing and I get used to making the different sounds on the conga, I'll hopefully start to progress. With the technique in place, I need to start to get the feel of the rhythms at the same time. I think if I get that, then in a couple of months time, I'll be somewhere where I can start looking to more complex stuff.

Aside from the congas, I've been sorting out some bits for next year within the committee. The budget plan was a bit of a marathon to complete as we were going off last year's plan which was essentially some educated guesses from Alic Ja. Turns out they were pretty accurate though, especially in terms of where we'd end up financially at the end of the year! Plans for next year aren't amazingly ambitious, but they're definitely realistic and I reckon that if we can achieve them, it'll set HD1C up really well for the next few years, especially in terms of a solid core membership of players.

As well as that, I've had some communication with the university, which has been useful in seeing how it works as a giant system really. We've started to make some links with a couple of people who will be useful for the society within the next year, and really, this sort of thing can only serve to help us get more established within the union. There was a training day on Thursday where we got some fairly useful tips on a couple of things, so I now feel relatively confident about being able to do some things like putting on a Give it a Go session and making it successful. I've even had my first interaction with the cash office, so it's definitely been productive. Quickly totting up a guess on hours, I'd say that since Tuesday, I've probably had about 15 hours dedicated to Honeydrum...which is a fair amount, and it's definitely kept me from boredom. That was what I was dreading most about summer...boredom. If I was just sat around in my room watching DVDs and browsing Twitter and Facebook for things to amuse me, I'd get bored so quickly and start to hate myself. If things carry on this way, I'll be keeping busy...especially once I get the bike back up and running.

So in that respect, life is going pretty well. I was down at Headingley...well, yesterday now to see the Twenty20 match between Yorkshire and Warwickshire. A good game, but I suspect I'm something of a bad omen for the White Rose. Whenever I've been to one of their games, they've lost. Just as well I've got a ticket for the Lancashire game in a few weeks. Coincidentally, Lancashire have never lost a game when I've attended (whether it's one day of a county match which they've gone on to win or a CB40 game). We'll see if that trend continues.

I've had some ridiculously funky dreams lately...one or two of you will know about these, so to everyone else, it might seem like a gigantic riddle. For that, I can only really apologise. But last Thursday and Thursday just gone, I had two connected dreams. Maybe my sub-conscious has made me the star in a series that will play out in my mind across a couple of Thursdays, maybe there'll be a primetime nap special over the weekend...but they're good. Apart from being slightly obscure, they are bringing a smile to my face because good things are happening in these dreams. If I felt more confident in myself, perhaps these things could actually leave the realm of dreams and become reality. That's something I probably need to work on myself...in fact, I definitely need to work on that.

As a final note, I'm currently watching Series 4 of That Mitchell and Webb Look. I honestly don't remember a lot about this series the first time around, but I've really enjoyed it so far. Sketch comedy is still managing to put out the goods...which also reminds me that I need to invest in a boxset of Fry and Laurie. Saying that, they've just closed an episode with a rather depressing sketch about an old and demented Sherlock Holmes which wasn't really funny at all. I don't know whether that was the point...and I'm quite confused by it.

There's a lot of good comedy in the world, and if you like stand-up comedy, there's a lot of good UK talent around that aren't in the mainstream. Stretch further afield to the USA where I've found myself watching a bit more comedy as a result of podcasts from the excellent Deathsquad network (check them on iTunes or on deathsquad.tv) and discovering a couple more comedians over there. Like I say, good comedy is out there and stand-up is continuing to succeed, and long may it continue to do so!

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About Me

I'm a German student at the University of Leeds.
Like everyone else, I'm on a journey through life. On this blog, I'll write about good things, bad things and random thoughts and ideas that I have in my head. Whether you read every single entry I write, or just read select entries, I hope you enjoy reading them and get to know a little bit about me.